


we know what we are (but not what we may be)

by nebulousviolet



Category: H.I.V.E. Series - Mark Walden
Genre: Brief Mention of Underage Drinking, Gen, mostly just an excuse for an awkward heart-to-heart, set between aftershock and deadlock, sort of christmassy!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28281645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulousviolet/pseuds/nebulousviolet
Summary: Switzerland, December 12th.
Relationships: Otto Malpense & Natalya | Raven
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: H.I.V.E. Gift Exchange 2020





	we know what we are (but not what we may be)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brachylagus_fandom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brachylagus_fandom/gifts).



> as usual i had no idea what to rate this so sorry if the T rating feels overkill lol  
> i will not lie, i struggled MAJORLY with this one. my prompts were worldbuilding and hurt/comfort and i tried to hit both of those (although the h/c is more...emotional hurt than anything) bc raven and otto's bonding trip around the world is my fave 'dark' period of canon to write about. as well as some christmassy vibes because, well...tis the season. also oranges became a big theme in this?? anyway, amy, i hope you like it!! and to anyone else who might be reading this, enjoy :)  
> title taken from hamlet because i am awful.

So, confession time: Raven doesn’t celebrate Christmas. She has few memories of her life on the streets of Moscow, and it certainly wasn’t a priority in the Glasshouse, and by the time she met Nero she was too jaded, too busy trying to pick up the pieces of her life to try and mould them into a future she thought she would never live to have to care about ‘Christmas spirit’. She participates in the staff Secret Santa, begrudgingly allows Shelby to play her Christmas mix during Raven and Wing’s last sparring match before the holidays, but that’s it, and while the rest of the school watches whatever godforsaken Christmas movie they’ve decided on via the secret ballot held on December 1st (because Nero feels not-so-secretly guilty about preventing his students from seeing their families, and tries to make up for it in as many ways possible), she usually finds herself in her quarters. Drinking, or training, or just catching up on her sleep - they’re all viable possibilities, depending on her mood, and of course there’s always a decent proportion of students who don’t celebrate who are more than willing to seize the opportunity to earn some extra credit by doing some refresher hand-to-hand combat courses. And that sounds kind of sad, out loud, but Raven likes her life and her routine and knows how to keep it, and she doesn’t see the point in summoning festive cheer for a holiday that means little to her. That’s the truth of it, and she doesn't care what other people think.

This year, though, things are different. This year, some thirty Alpha stream students are taking fifteen-year-old Raven’s place by spending December 25th in Anastasia Furan’s clutches, and Raven is no closer to figuring out exactly where that _is_ than she was at the beginning of autumn. This year, Raven has the added responsibility of Otto Malpense - Otto, who is also going to be spending the holiday season separated from his friends, whose only familiar face is going to be _Raven_ . Otto, whose dry remarks have turned genuinely hurtful, whose usual dark circles have garnered the appearance of bruises, who seems _less_ than what he was three months ago. 

And it’s none of her business. Raven knows Otto, knows him better than she knows he thinks she does, and he won’t appreciate her trying to help him: that’s just what seventeen-year-olds are _like_ . He keeps telling her to treat him like an adult, and she is, mostly, but she’s hung up on the fact that, well - he isn’t. Not legally, or emotionally, or in any of the ways that count, and Nero might be buying it but Raven's been _Otto_ before, just a little different, a little more fucked up, and, no matter how hard she tries, she keeps coming back to it. So it goes like this: instead of peeling back the doors of an advent calendar, Raven spends her December trying to figure out how to make Otto Malpense _more_ again.

* * *

“You look awful,” Raven says without looking up from her laptop screen or sugarcoating her tone. Switzerland, December 12th. Otto is peeling an orange, watching its sickly pallor in the overhead fluorescent light; either Raven has never heard of natural lighting, or just doesn’t care for it, because it’s the one thing all of her safe houses have in common. He crushes a segment between his teeth, sticky-sweet, but his mouth still feels all sour and wrong. “You should get some more sleep.”  
“Hypocrite,” Otto mutters, as he shreds orange peel with his fingers absently. There isn’t much else for him to _do_ in Switzerland other than sleep, really - they’re here in what even Otto is beginning to recognise is a wild goose chase, looking for traces of the Disciples’ financial records, and all of Raven’s contacts have specified that she conduct her meetings with them alone. Which just leaves Otto in the safe house, _also_ alone, thinking about Shelby and Wing and Franz on a good day, and Laura and the others on a bad one. He should probably cut Raven some slack - it’s not _her_ fault that any of this is happening, and sometimes he catches her looking at him and frowning - but it’s difficult to stay cognisant of that when Otto is so angry and so tired and so _empty_ all the damn time. 

She doesn’t react to the barb. Of course she doesn’t; Raven gets five hours of sleep a night and manages to make it look like fifteen, and she has an uncanny knack for refusing to rise to his stupidest remarks. Instead, she says, “Put that in the bin,” without so much as pausing her incessant typing.

Otto is thinking about a drunk conversation with Wing and Shelby and Laura and Lucy last year - when Lucy was still alive and Laura not condemned and Otto not expelled. He’s thinking about Lucy’s smile, delicate as a stiletto-knife as she called Raven _frighteningly competent_ and Shelby’s acerbic reply of _just plain frightening_ and Wing’s cry of protest while Laura sagged closer and closer towards Otto’s shoulder, smelling like vodka and coke and mint bodywash. The way Lucy’s eyes glittered, almost feverish, and her dark hair seemed to tickle his nose. And when he tries to replay the sound of her laugh in his head, it just doesn’t come out quite right. He’s thinking about it, and then he isn’t, and he drops the orange peel into the bin with a dry swallow.

“Can we get more of these?” he asks, trying not to sound rude, and also not like he’s close to tears. “The little oranges.”

“If you want,” Raven says. Her tone is bored, disinterested; if Otto bothered to glance over at her, he’d see her eyes narrowed in concern, but he’s too busy staring at the floor. “At least you won’t get scurvy.”  
“Funny,” he says.

“Not a joke,” she returns. “I’ve seen what you eat, Malpense. It’s a miracle your hair hasn’t started falling out. Yet.”

He rolls his eyes in her general direction, reaches for another orange and throws it up cautiously, catching it with his outstretched palm. “They’re Laura’s favourite,” he says, not knowing why. “Shelby never used to let her live it down - something about her hair being the same colour as her breakfast. And oranges are a lot easier to get to than Laura right now, so.”

Raven’s looking at him again. She closes the laptop with pale, scarred fingers, and offers into the air, “You deserved better. All of you.”  
“What do you want me to do with that?” he snaps, suddenly frustrated. “I’m still here. She’s still there. It doesn’t matter.”  
She looks as though she wants to say something, but doesn’t. Instead, she goes to her weapons case, and starts to wipe down her throwing knives. Otto doesn’t know why she bothers; it’s not like she ever uses them, attached as she is to her katanas. And in the new year she’ll tell him that she’s been forced out of bad habits, that caring for her weapons is the closest she comes to a nervous tick, but right now it is December 12th, and Otto watches a pirated movie while H.I.V.E.mind chatters disapprovingly in the background.

* * *

Two days later, dried orange slices appear, folded in a cloth on top of the makeshift coffee table and right next to the bag of fresh, edible oranges that look just like the ones served at H.I.V.E during mealtimes. 

“I thought the smell would cancel out the teenage boy,” Raven comments casually, following his line of sight. But he can see tension in the lines of her shoulders - apprehension, maybe? As if she’s not quite sure what to do with this. And Otto knows the feeling; he’s not quite sure what to do with this either, this sudden act of kindness. 

“Festive,” Otto says, running a finger over them. They’re tough to the touch, and yet oddly delicate; he kind of wants to throw one, and he also kind of wants to give Raven a hug. Both are terrible ideas. Still, he’s touched nonetheless. “Reminds me of St. Sebastian’s and the Christingle.”  
“Don’t know what that is,” Raven says.

“You stick a candle into an orange, and then I think there’s some sweets?” Otto furrows his brow in memory. There were assemblies, back when he still went to school with all the other children, but as perfect as his recollection is, it can’t do anything to counterbalance his determined ignorance of the reverend. “I didn’t really listen. I remember the sweets, though.”  
  
“You would,” Raven mutters, before adding, almost fond, “Little shit.” She turns back, ostensibly to take one last look over her monthly report to Nero - the ones she dreads writing, both because there’s hardly ever any good news and writing in English for too long gives her headaches - when Otto realises he hasn’t done the obvious yet.

“Hey,” he calls. “Thank you. It means a lot. I know I haven’t always been - easy to deal with. Especially since the Hunt.”

Raven’s smile, when he sees it, is small and more sad than anything. “Frankly, I’d be more worried if you _were_ easy, Malpense,” she tells him. “And I’m sorry that you’re spending Christmas alone, after the year you’ve had.”

Otto is baffled. “What, are you going somewhere on the 25th?”  
Raven blinks. “No.”  
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he says. “By the way, I don’t think we should try cooking a turkey after the duck incident, and I don’t really like trimmings, so I was wondering if we could have Chinese? Or basically anything that isn’t the dried food we brought from Madrid. I’ll even steal the money myself.”  
Raven shakes her head slowly in disbelief. “You’re really something.”  
“I’ll pick up the Chinese on my own?” Otto offers.

Raven laughs. “Alright, fine,” she says. She picks up an orange from the table and sets it on her desk, decisive. “Whatever you want.”

(She doesn’t tell him that she’s been trying to convince Nero to let them video call Trinity, Fanchu, and Argentblum - just for five minutes, just to lift Otto’s spirits - and that Nero’s refusal is resolute, that he believes it isn’t worth the security risk. Raven’s not quite sure how much of that is genuine, and how much of it is misdirected frustration at Otto for allowing Anastasia to infiltrate the Hunt in the first place - even though Raven, slowly but surely, is beginning to think that it was never just Otto and Laura, that Otto maybe took the rap for something all of his friends did, too. Raven supposes that that’s commendable. And it’s not _her_ job to tell Nero how to do his. Maybe she’s going soft after all.)

(She likes to believe she would’ve done the same thing for Dimitri and Tolya, once upon a time. But part of her wishes Otto had been just a little more selfish. Just a little more willing to save his own skin.)

(Oranges, she thinks. Who’d have thought.)


End file.
